I suppose I can take a break from my new full-time job of shitting all over the Susan G. Komen Foundation on Twitter and Facebook to make some dinner. A short break.
If you don’t know why Komen deserves to be shat upon, then Google them. I’m not your mother doing your math homework for you here; I don’t care if you flunk the second grade.* I will just say this: you should never have been wasting your cash on stupid pink crap to begin with. You can lick yogurt tops clean until the end of days, but it’s not helping anyone pay for chemotherapy. Also, you should eat better yogurt anyway.
*Start here if you want. After the feeling of stabbiness passes, which takes some time, go give some money to these people and these people.
As though the Komen bullshit isn’t making me cranky enough, I’ve thrown my back out. Apparently, when I turned 34 in December I was actually turning 80. I walked from the couch to the bathroom earlier, and it was so awful that my life flashed before my eyes. In my panic, I told the dogs they could have all my stuff when I die. I think they took me at my word and are now plotting against me, because I really needed something else to worry about.
To cope, I’ve got the heating pad, the Icy Hot patch and a great big bottle of Advil. Every three hours, I throw a big handful of Advil in the air, and whatever lands in my mouth is what I take.
I picked this recipe – seared scallops with endive marmalade and caramelized meyer lemon vinaigrette, from Fresh from the Market
I tossed some thinly-sliced endive into a pot with a pat of butter; after wilting it down, I added sugar, lemon juice and red pepper flakes and let it cook until brown and jammy.
*And even THAT hurt my back.
While the endive cooked, I got the ingredients together for the pan sauce so everything would be ready to go when the scallops were done.
Somehow, I read “two meyer lemons, peeled and segmented” as “1/3 cup meyer lemon juice.” Cutting supremes of citrus fruits may be my most hated food prep task. I will pass over or adapt recipes so I don’t have to supreme fruit. Cutting supremes is the lone reason I can never go to culinary schools. There’s no way I’d be able to pass that section of knife skills and I’d end up at the top of the clock tower throwing grapefruits at passersby. Also, a supremed tangelo killed my grandfather.
But I did it, fighting with the tiny, slippery fruits until I had a small bowl of passable segments, and then I had to lie down on my fainting couch for a few minutes to recover my composure.
I patted some improbably large scallops dry, seasoned them and plopped them into a hot saute pan with some butter. Three minutes on one side, one on the other, and they were perfectly done.
The supremes went into the pan to caramelize for a few minutes, followed by fresh tangerine juice and then some muscat (which was supposed to be Sauternes, if you’re interested in recreating this, but I was having a cheap week). The liquid reduced into a dark syrup, got smoothed out with a little cold butter, and it was dinnertime.
More accurately, then it was time for the dogs to get into a snit – they sound nasty, but they fight like 12-year-old girls – which was ostensibly over food, but which I suspect was over which one of them gets ownership of my iPhone when they finally off me.
This dinner is very brown-on-brown; the fridge was sadly devoid of chives, so I tried adding some lemon segments for a soupçon of color but it didn’t really work. And it was cold, thanks to the dogs’ greed. Also, it was supposed to have big globs of caviar on top (well, optionally), but I can’t bring myself to shell out the big bucks for something I don’t even like.
Aside from all that it was a delight, if not a tad sweet. The scallops brought their natural sweetness; it was complemented but not overwhelmed by the citrus and stone fruit notes* of the “vinaigrette”**, while subtle bitter notes from the endive lurked at the back of my tongue.
Now, it’s back to the sofa and heating pad, and it’s about time for another fistful of ibuprofen. If anyone wants to send a care package, I would gladly accept a bottle of percoset, a snuggie and some Milk Duds.
*From the muscat, a French dessert wine.
**Because: where’s the vinegar at, yo?
Thursday Night Smackdown 
Looks so yummy.
Aleve helps my back more than Advil. Hope you have a fast recovery.
If you WERE going to shit all over the Komen Foundation in here, I’d be happy to help. Oh, they’re all for breast health… unless you’re poor, then you can go die lest a right-wing person gets upset about the name on the clinic where you get checked out.
ANYWAY, um, food! I’m a fan of it! Back pain not so much! I’m on-topic!
Help me, I’m not sure I want to be in mental sync with “the TNS lady”. But this is the 3rd time in 6 months where I’ve checked your blog only to realize we had similar things to eat for dinner (in this case we had seared scallops last night). It is starting to freak me out, just a bit.
Next week for Thursday night dinner we’re having a pint of NC fresh oysters, dusted with seasoned flour and quick pan-fried. There. What are the chances you’ll be doing oysters, slim and none, right?
Yo, don’t get me started on Komen! Those bastards take your money and use it to sue little kids selling “cooies for the cure” because they feel “for the cure” is a trademark. I wish I were making that up, repulsive beyond belief.
And Thermacare heat wraps are my go-to for the back. I keep them in stock.
And by the way, kudos on a great looking meal!
AAAACK!!!! “COOKIES!” I feel like a dope!
Oh my god, if weren’t too lazy to have a blog, I would have written a less-funny version the first few paragraphs of this post myself. From the “fuck poor people, here have a nice pink tee shirt” nonsense to the yogurt-top-licking inanity, holy shit I don’t know how I haven’t killed a puppy in the last 2 days.
Anyway, I’ll channel the upset into a heftier donation to PP this year, and a bold attempt at not fucking up scallops. Yay weeekend.
I feel like we should be staging some kind of protest. Like, an abort-in on the front steps of the Komen foundation. Or something. You know, I don’t want to be dramatic.
i’d like to think i had a little something to do with this (i didn’t): komen reverses pp funding decision.
so that’s good and all… but the komen foundation can still kiss my ass.
Weird question. Who is your web host? Your images always load brilliantly fast.
@adriane, i use media temple.
OH MY GOD. That video made me want to stab that man and his fussy fruit preparation with this fancy curved knife. At one point, I shouted “JUST PEEL THE DAMN THING!” at my monitor. I would never make it through culinary school either.
Feel better!
Argh, yeah, the whole Komen thing sucks big time – have been watching it unfold on Twitter. Even their retraction feels shady, too little too late, that kind of thing.
I’ve never actually eaten a scallop, but I do fancy they’re delicious, especially like this. I’m anti-supreme, too – seems like every time I try and do that, every last one of my fingers gets a hangnail, and the sour juice finds its way into them.
Hope your back throws itself back the right way soon! 🙂